When opera composers take up the Bible it isn’t usually in search of spiritual instruction. Nothing of the sort was on his mind when Verdi repurposed the Old Testament story of Nebuchadnezzar herding the Hebrews into Babylonian captivity for his opera Nabucco, which has just been playing at Covent Garden in a run disturbed but not destroyed by Covid cancellations.
Verdi was notoriously unsympathetic to the Church, and his chief interest in this biblical scenario was as the backdrop to a love story of the classic kind that involves warring factions, rivals and recriminations. One of Nabucco’s daughters has fallen for a handsome young Hebrew, and if that wasn’t problematic enough, his other daughter Abigaille has fallen for him too. No good can come of this, and for much of the opera it doesn’t.
